With 2 weeks of the year still left, 2025 has already become a record-breaking year for shootings in the Brussels-Capital region. 96 firearms incident have been record since the start of the year. This is 1 more than the total number of shootings recorded in 2024. Although the number of shootings, many of which are drug-related, is not rising significantly, it is not falling either.
Between 1 January 2025 and 15 December 2025, the Federal Police Service recorded 96 shooting in the 19 municipalities that make up the Brussels-Capital Region. This is around double the number of such incidents that occurred in 2022. The police’s definition of a shooting or firearms incident is "An incident on the public highway or at a location that is accessible to the public whereby several shots are fired and/or someone is injured or dies as a result of a firearm having been used”. The lion’s share of shootings are drug related. However, the police have not released any figures to confirm this.
The number of fatal shootings, 8 so far in 2025, is in line with the figures for last year (9 fatal shootings). The figures show an average of two shootings per week in Brussels. Most firearms incidents don’t result in fatalities. In the turf wars between rival drug gangs, victims are often shot in the leg as a warning. In the most recent incident, near a notorious drugs hotspot in Sint-Gillis, the façade of a building was shot at.
The geographical spread of the shootings is similar to last year with all but a handful of incident having taken place in 5 municipalities (City of Brussels, Anderlecht, Sint-Gillis, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek and Schaarbeek). Suburban municipalities such as Ganshoren in the northwest and Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe in the east saw no shootings at all this year. Areas such as the Kuregem area of Anderlecht, the historic centre of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek and the Lower Sint-Gillis have seen more than their fair share of shootings this year.